By Nadim Ladki, BEIRUT, April 26 (Reuters) – Lebanese police on Thursday found the bodies of a Sunni Muslim government supporter and a 12-year-old boy whose abduction earlier this week was linked to Lebanon’s rising sectarian tension. The bodies of Ziad Qabalan, 25, and Ziad Ghandour, 12, were found in a field north of the port city of Sidon, 40 km (25 miles) south of Beirut, after a local television station received an anonymous phone tip, police sources said.

Ghandour’s father and Qabalan are members of the Progressive Socialist Party of pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a fierce opponent of Syria and its Lebanese ally Shi’ite group Hezbollah. Jumblatt swiftly appealed to supporters not to take things into their own hands.

Let’s leave the investigation take its course so that we don’t fall into (the trap) of political rumours," he told Future Television minutes after the news broke. "Let’s distance politics from this issue."

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had said earlier in the day the kidnapping was a "terrorist act" aimed at stirring sectarian strife in Lebanon.

Lebanese media had reported that the two had been kidnapped by members of a Shi’ite clan who had vowed to avenge the killing of their relative in clashes between government and opposition supporters at a Beirut university in January.

The Shi’ite Shamas clan named by the media condemned the kidnapping and distanced itself from the abduction in a statement on Wednesday.

Jumblatt praised the Shamas clan and the two main Shi’ite groups Hezbollah and Amal for quickly denouncing the abduction.

Sporadic violence between the mainly Sunni, Druze and Christian ruling coalition and mainly Shi’ite and Christian opposition have killed 10 people since the opposition launched a street campaign to topple the government in December.

The political crisis, Lebanon’s worst since the 1975-1990 civil war, has at times threatened to spill into Sunni-Shi’ite strife as sectarian tensions run high.

Shortly before the bodies were found, Siniora said the abduction was "a terrorist act designed to terrify the Lebanese. He said the incident should drive various leaders to double their efforts to find a solution to the political deadlock.

Sectarian kidnappings were rife during the civil war. Thousands of people who disappeared some three decades ago are still listed as missing. About 150,000 people were killed in that war. (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam)